Don
Tompkins, a fan who grew up in New York, wrote that he and his two brothers
and two sisters all were big fans of "Davy Crockett." But their father
didn't like the way they kept leaving their coonskin caps around the house
and yard.

Coming home
from work one night, their father saw the tail sticking out of a garbage
can and kicked it in.

"I watch
my Web site and I see those and it really tickles me that people are that
interested," Parker says. "Almost without exception I'm always told that,
'I had the cap' and 'I had the jacket' and just a couple of days ago a
lady told me something. I
thought I'd heard it all. When she was a little girl, she wore her coonskin
cap to church."

Parker, now
80 and a grandfather nine times over, still speaks with the distinctive
drawl that marked his days on "Davy Crockett" and his Texas birthplace.
His own coonskin cap - one of them, anyway - is tucked away for safekeeping
in the Smithsonian Institution. He donated it to the D.C. landmark last
year. He's not positive that was the same cap he wore on "Davy Crockett."

Parker donned
an identical cap on his second frontier series, "Daniel Boone." Parker
left acting long ago. He received a slice of the merchandising profits
and invested his money in California real estate. His business today is
wine. The owner of Fess Parker's Winery & Vineyard north of Santa Barbara,
which he runs with son Eli (daughter Ashley handles the public relations),
Parker can't escape his past. Nor does he want to. His wine label features
a coonskin cap.

Parker, who
also owns the Fess Parker Wine Country Inn & Spa in Los Olivos, picked
up some of his business acumen from Walt Disney. He learned to rely on
consultants if he didn't know how to do something himself, to think on
a large scale and to use his name as a trademark.

A Navy veteran
and a graduate of the University of Texas, Parker headed off to Hollywood
in the summer of 1950. He made the rounds of the studios, talked with
some people, and found enough encouragement that he returned a year later
for a second try. He received some sound advice from his father.

"When I told
my dad I wanted to go back and try to be an actor, he said, 'Do a good
job, boy.' He told me later he thought I'd be back in three months." Parker
had more luck this time. He appeared in a production of "Mister Roberts"
with Henry Fonda. Rance Howard, future father of television star and director
Ron Howard, was in the company as well.

"I remember
when Rance and his wife were expecting Ronny," Parker says. "I've been
around a long time and Ronny is beginning to look a little middle-aged
now."

Before "Davy
Crockett," Parker's acting credits were slim. Disney spotted the 6-foot-6
actor in a minor role in the 1954 horror film "Them!" He brought Parker
in to see if he was right as Crockett. Parker arrived carrying a guitar.
He'd been inspired to pick up the instrument a couple of years earlier
after seeing Burl Ives perform.

"The only
person in my family that sang was my grandmother," Parker recalls. "She
was a Methodist and she sang hymns all day while she worked. It must have
helped because she had to work unbelievably hard compared to women today:
Cooked on a wood stove, and ironed with irons heated on a wood stove.
She bathed in a No. 3 washtub and she went to the outhouse."

Parker learned
to pick out tunes, and even wrote one called "Lonely," a train song about
a man who's lost his love. That's the song Parker sang for Disney when
the studio boss asked if he wanted to sing something.

"I did not
know he was a train buff," Parker says. "I would have been a genius if
I had known that and come in with that little song. But I did it with
total naivete, if you will."

Disney signed
Parker to a personal contract two weeks later and sent him into the recording
studio to record "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." The song famously told
the story of Crockett's life:

"Born on
a mountain top in Tennessee,
greenest state in the land of the free
raised in the woods so he knew ev'ry tree
kilt him a b'ar when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, kind of the wild frontier!"

When the
merchandise craze hit, one entrepreneur sold the mounted head of a stuffed
"b'ar" to capitalize on the popularity of the song. Eventually, more than
40 people recorded versions of the ballad, including Tennessee Ernie Ford,
Frankie Lane and Burl Ives. The version used to open the hour-long episodes
was sung by veteran soap opera actor Bill Hayes.

Walt Disney
initially turned away from television. But he needed money to build what
would be Disneyland and began looking for investors. ABC agreed to invest,
provided Disney produce programming for the network.

The program
"Disneyland" was the answer, and the show featured four recurring themes
tied in with what the park was going to offer. The three "Davy Crockett"
hours were part of the "Frontierland" theme. ABC contributed $100,000
for each show. (Today the Disney company owns ABC.)

Disney
expected to lose money on "Davy Crockett," which cost a total of about
$750,000 to make, and recoup his investment only after combining the shows
into a feature film for release overseas. But he didn't take into account
the demand for merchandise. And no one expected the adventures of "Davy
Crockett" to be so enormously popular. By the time the first episode aired,
Disney had filmed the third, which killed off the hero at the Alamo.

Buddy Ebsen
originally was considered for the role of Davy Crockett. Instead, he wound
up with the part of Georgie Russel, Crockett's lifelong friend. In his
autobiography, "The Other Side of Oz," Ebsen recalled the hazards of making
the show because the Disney studio was accustomed to animation and naive
about live-action filming. The stunt man sent to double for Parker and
Ebsen was 5-feet-5 inches while the two stars topped six feet. The two
men were forced to do their own stunts.

"In the course
of filming," Ebsen wrote, "I figure I qualified for four Purple Hearts.
The most dangerous incident involved a muzzle-loading musket, which blew
up in my face. In the explosion and flash, I lost my eyelashes, my eyebrows,
and a good patch of my front hairline." Ebsen and Parker would remain
lifelong friends.

Ebsen went
on to greater fame on "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Barnaby Jones" before
his death in 2003. As enthusiasm mounted for "Davy Crockett," Disney sent
Parker on a 22-city tour and then to 13 foreign countries. He'd stop at
department stores in Philadelphia, Dallas, New Orleans, Detroit and "on
and on and on" to point out the availability of Crockett merchandise.
Parker found his fame daunting.

"I learned
it was a heck of a lot of work to be a celebrity," he says. "I couldn't
go out and eat in a restaurant."

Overseas,
Parker says, "I would appear on the stage with my little guitar and sing
two or three little songs in places like Holland and Belgium. I was in
costume the whole time. I finally got used to it."

During a
black-tie affair in Washington, D.C., Parker found himself again in costume
and sharing the dais with admirals, generals and senators all wanting
his autograph, ostensibly for their grandchildren. "That was the genius
of Walt Disney. He appealed to the whole family."

The
first three "Davy Crockett" films were based on Crockett's actual exploits,
including his stint in Congress and the battle at the Alamo. Disney filmed
two additional fictionalized stories and those aired in November and December
1955.

Retailers
expecting the craze to continue into Christmas 1955 were disappointed.
The Montgomery Ward Christmas Book was filled with "Gifts from Your Davy
Crockett Trading Post," including mittens (98 cents), a lunch box ($2.29)
and, of course, coonskin cap ($1.79). By then, however, the Crockett craze
had passed.

That was
fine for Parker. He wanted it to end. "I was hoping it would. I wanted
to do feature films."

Still under
contract to Disney, Crockett made three other films for the studio, including
the 1957 tearjerker "Old Yeller." But he had a falling out with Disney
when the executives wouldn't allow him to make "The Searchers" for John
Ford or the Marilyn Monroe picture "Bus Stop."

Parker moved
over to Paramount and made a few films there, including the 1959 Bob Hope
comedy "Alias Jesse James." Parker
appeared in a cameo role as Davy Crockett. He also starred in the short-lived
TV series "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," based on the Jimmy Stewart movie;
the series only lasted 30 episodes for the 1962-63 season.

In 1964,
NBC wanted to revive the Davy Crockett character for a weekly series with
Parker again in the lead. Disney didn't own the rights to the character,
just to the merchandise and its own "Davy Crockett" films. By then, Disney
had moved his weekly series to NBC, renamed it "Disney's Wonderful World
of Color" and ruled the ratings. He balked at the idea of reviving the
character.

"Walt didn't
want me to do anything that would reduce the value of his five hours of
Davy Crockett," Parker says, "so somebody said, 'Well, why don't you do
Daniel Boone?'"

NBC banked
on "Daniel Boone" bringing about a repeat of the "Davy Crockett" merchandise
boom. A flood of products, from T-shirts and pajamas to lunchboxes and
caps, began arriving in stores the summer of 1964, months before the September
debut of "Daniel Boone." An estimated $10 million of products were made,
with NBC, producer 20th Century Fox and Parker splitting the profits.
Parker was part-owner of the show.

Parker made
165 episodes of "Daniel Boone" between 1964 and 1970. He filmed a new
episode every six days.

Parker also
directed a handful of episodes. "I felt felt like I was the first actor
put into a witness protection program," Parker says. "For 10 years I was
Davy Crockett and my wife's name was Polly and I have this little family
and 10 years later I'm Daniel Boone and my wife's name is Rebecca and
I've got different kids and I'm in a different place - wearing the same
cap."

Despite
similarities between the two legendary frontiersmen, including another
catchy theme song and identical coonskin cap, "Daniel Boone" didn't replicate
the Crockett craze. But the show did get people talking, in a fashion.
Co-star Ed Ames, who portrayed Boone's Indian friend Mingo, appeared on
the "Tonight Show" in April 1965. Ames boasted that he was good enough
with a tomahawk to hit a target from across the room. Johnny Carson took
him up on the challenge and had brought out a large log with an outline
of a human figure. Ames took aim and hit the target squarely in the crotch.

"Everybody
in America that had a water cooler had to hear the story if they hadn't
seen it," Parker says. "I often give Ed credit for calling the public's
attention to our show because they had to see the guy that threw that
hatchet."

Parker walked
away from acting in the early 1970s after a three-year contract with Warner
Bros. didn't amount to anything. He enjoyed his stint as a director on
"Daniel Boone" but didn't pursue that because he says he felt out of place
in the liberal world of Hollywood. "I am a Republican," he says. "I do
not understand people that have different designations." Besides, he recalls,
he was more interested in real estate by then. "I had a family and I was
very happy being home. So I just thought it was time to leave. You can
stay too long at the fair, as the saying goes."

But
the past isn't too far behind Parker. He returned to Disneyland in December
2004 for a tribute marking the 50th anniversary of the first "Davy Crockett"
episode. Now he would like to see the "Daniel Boone" series find a home
on cable television or released on DVD. If that happens, expect demand
for coonskin caps to increase again.

"I do know
for a fact that when young people are shown 'Davy Crockett' and 'Daniel
Boone,'" Parker says, "they want a cap."